digitaldc writes: The long, tortuous, behind-the-scenes process of building a Web language specification might not be terribly exciting, but its consequences for websites emphatically are. The first boon comes in the form of housekeeping. "HTML5 replaces the fragile ecosystem of JavaScript, HTML, plug-ins and undocumented de facto standards with a rigorously specified standard," says Bruce Lawson, Web evangelist for Opera Software and author of "Introducing HTML5." Many features that users once yearned for, such as Web video and complex Web apps, have been provided to us as a patchwork of jury-rigged plug-ins and coding tricks. HTML5 consolidates some of these tools, and eliminates the need for others.

That said, the real meat of the HTML5 spec is its new application programming interfaces (APIs), each promising new goodies to Web users and developers alike. Just as earlier versions of HTML allowed images to be embedded in websites, HTML5 includes a system for embedding videos, without the need for slow, buggy plug-ins like Adobe Flash. There has been some infighting about the specifics of how HTML5 video should work, but that didn't stop Steve Jobs from throwing his full weight behind it, going so far as to proclaim in a public posting that Flash is "no longer necessary." Indeed, the iPad became one of the first devices to exclusively use HTML5 to play embedded Web videos, and doesn't seem to suffer much for it.